Since the question that concerns me in what follows derives from Gibbon, it is as well to begin with those aspects of Christianity that he regarded as contributing to the decline and fall of Rome. He did, after all, distinguish between what he described as “a pure and humble religion” on the one hand, and “the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol” that grew out of it, which he associated with “Superstition,” on the other hand. In looking at what he saw as the negative role played by the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries we should, therefore, stick with his very specific criticisms. In the “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West” he claimed that the “clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity”; that a “large pro-portion of public and private wealth”—including “the soldiers’ pay”—“was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion”; that “the Church, and even the State, were distracted by religious factions”; and that “the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods.” He continued by stating that “the bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience” and that “the sacred indolence of the monks was undoubtedly embraced by a servile and effeminate age.” He did, however, acknowledge that “if the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall …” In what follows I will regroup Gibbon's points and consider the supposed role of Christianity in weakening the State, before turning to the distractions of religious disagreements (Gibbon's factions, and the importance of the synods) and thereafter to issues that are susceptible to some numerical analysis: the number of churchmen and the finances supporting the Church. Because these last issues can, to some extent, be dealt with in terms of facts and figures, they allow us to set the Church (and therefore “Religion”) at the heart of what is usually presented as purely secular history.

The first of Gibbon's complaints is perhaps the easiest to dismiss.